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Kids Say Email is Dead
An anonymous reader writes "'E-mail is, like, soooo dead' is the headline at News.com, where a piece looks at youth attitudes towards communication mediums. A group of teenage internet business entrepreneurs confessed that they really only use email to 'talk to adults'. Primarily, these folks are using social networks to communicate. 'More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging. Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old founder and president of MyYearbook.com, was the lone teen entrepreneur who said she still uses e-mail regularly to keep up with camp friends or business relationships. Still, that usage pales in comparison to her habit of text messaging. She said she sends a thousand text messages a month.'"
This only says what youth does, not what they'll use as adults. I'm guessing for more durable and more effective communications the youth of today will opt for something more substantial than "c u 2nit".
Youth today do what they do because it's there, not because it's going to replace traditional communications.
When "we" were young, we passed notes on pieces of paper. The girls passed messages by lip-reading (never understood how they were so good at that). I never saw any articles predicting "note passing", and lip-reading becoming the protocol de jour. If we'd had text messaging, we'd have done it too.
Consider from the article:
That seems to contradict the main thesis of the article. Basically, for important things like business and/or sponsors Martina uses e-mail? The e-mail is not dead, or as the article claims like, soooo dead.Text messaging, social web sites serve a purpose, not replace one. (This is akin the predictions recently "laptops to replace desktops".)
Critical thought, thorough discussion, deep understanding -- none are much served by the text messaging medium. (e-mail doesn't do much for them either.)
They "only use e-mail to 'talk to adults'". They'll use e-mail and more traditional forms of communication when they become adults. It doesn't mean they'll stop using the text messaging and other forms, it just means they'll need the more traditional forms.
i cld b wrng. i hope im not.
I don't know about you guys but when ten years ago when I was fourteen, e-mail was dead too. Initially, I used to use Web based IM clients to talk to my friends quickly followed by ICQ and and even later MSN.
I only started using e-mail when my group of friends started working full time. I think the reason for this is that e-mail is mostly open at work because it's required for the business. Moreover, employers don't really care if you e-mail your friends from your account, provided you're not taking the piss. In contrast, browsing social networking sites from work can get you sacked.
In short, there's nothing new here. I think the youngsters of today will follow the same path as I did ten years ago; they will adopt e-mail when their circle of friends grow-up and go to work.
Simon
So people are using _different clients_ to send their ascii messages.
whatever...
...is soon I'll be using myspace to update my boss on my TPS reports?
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
... I see this all the time. My take on it: younger people are in a hurry for response. They want immediate replies. But adults (as will these teens eventually) live in a different world, where the speed of response is part of the value but the message itself is important, too. I have to train my students to understand that leaving an email message for me will always result in a response, even if it is a little later, while IM may not.
From another perspective, MySpace and Facebook have messaging features which are simply email in a different form (posting to the web site). I am still at a loss to understand why posting a message on a web site (with the exception of group communication) is more beneficial than sending an email.
... Long live email.
P.S. I wish face-to-face speech would die. I hate my coworkers.
So he'll have a terrible article to repost tomorrow.
The Farewell Tour II
Think in full sentences?
Well, there's your problem, right there.
This is a cognitive issue. Kids can't/won't string together solid thoughts, aren't entertained by people that do, and aren't rewarded for trying to do so themselves. Of course they can't imagine doing boring, old-people stuff like learning to use tools that are built around a more verbose (and demanding, and useful) form of communication. GOML!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I can't give you an educated response because I'm texting my BFF Jill.
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
Over time I think these kids will learn that in the real world where you're trying to get work done, IM is annoying as hell. It's like having someone call you on the phone every few seconds. No thanks.
E-mail, web forums, and other "delayed" forms of communication are so much better for almost everything.
IM is really only a substitute for the phone. And then only when it makes sense, like to save money on long distance or when you need to be quiet.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I already shudder at any group in my company hiring anyone under 25, and I'm under 25! I can't imagine relying on teenagers as a labor source (grocery stores, restaurants, etc). Even the interns we get from a very well-to-do private school are, in terms of professionalism, socially retarded. I've had to filter and lock down their e-mail and other communications from them to our clients because their messages are full of misspellings, wrong words, "u" instead of "you", and bad structure altogether. How do you misspell "their" with Outlook? I have to TRY to misspell it and even then it isn't easy.
Well actually they're talking about you.
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Teenagers shallow and faddish. Details at 11.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
They will just float from CEO job to CEO job.
What, CEO of their mom's basement? A "social network" is next to useless for building professional contacts if it's just full of other dumbass teenagers texting OMG WTF BBQ at each other all day.
Earlier this year, I discussed this matter with a 16-year-old girl. She said she preferred IM (MSN) over SMTP, because any email account she used would quickly get overloaded with spam. Many of us have different ways of dealing with that problem, but her solution was simply to never use the same email account for too long if she had to use it, and preferably not to use it at all. I suspect that this is not the only reason why she and her friends don't like to use email, but by itself spam seems like a valid complaint.
He said 'intelligent communications' and you responded about 'middle management types.'
Please parse for errors.
Kids can't/won't string together solid thoughts
It's true!
This is pretty far down for a reply but I've got to post this...
My great grandmother passed down an old photograph book containing postcards she had received (we're talking circa 1900's) to my grandmother who, in turn, passed it to my mother who, in turn, was about to throw it in the garbage when I intercepted it (Being the family geek/tech/now digital archivist)
They were 1 cent postcards containing one or two sentence messages addressed from my grandmother and her sisters to family relations the next state over.
Or so I thought... the messages were your standard high-school girl talk along the lines of "I went out to the after-game dance with so and so last night, looking forward to seeing you this weekend." From the postcards it seemed like they saw each other every week. Not a big deal until you consider that transportation consisted of horse, buggy and train so no family was going to make a weekly journey by train unless they were rich (whoo-hoo!) Until I remembered that my family wasn't (D'oh!)
A little more research and I realized they weren't in different states, they were in neighboring towns (long since absorbed into greater cities), no phones were arount yet so I was looking at the early 20th century equivalent of...
text messaging.
And my great-grandmother, in her nostalgia, had collected all the messages they had received from her sisters and cousins and saved them in this album.
Kind of unfortunate that we won't be able to keep the same for our great grandkids (and thus omg! cnt w8 2cu 2nit @ cncrt! lol! will be lost to the centuries...)